The shoes were waiting for her Friday night in her hotel room at Topeka’s Ramada Hotel and Convention Center. And it is about time.

“I should’ve replaced these in Denver,” she said, looking down at the well-worn pair on her feet. “I’ve put a lot of miles on them.”

Since March 1, Harrington, 43, has been walking across the U.S. to raise awareness and funds for Shriners Hospitals for Children, which specializes in orthopedics, burn care, spinal cord injuries and cleft lips and palates in children.

In 2005, Harrington’s nephew, Matthew, was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 14. The hospital in Reno, Nev., wasn’t equipped to handle the severity of his case, but someone suggested his family seek treatment at the Shriners Hospital in Sacramento, Calif. He was accepted for treatment, underwent spinal fusion surgery, and now, according to his aunt, is doing “really well.”

But a few years ago, Harrington read in an article that Shriners International was considering closing some of its hospitals.

“I wanted to do something,” she said.

At that moment, Harrington said, she recalled a childhood dream of wanting to walk across the U.S. — and she knew that was what she would do to help Shriners.

She saved enough money to cover her bills while she was away from her home in Meridian, Idaho, and her job as an aesthetician and phlebotomist. Then she planned a cross-country route based on locations of Shriners Hospitals, which she is visiting during her journey.

She started in Astoria, Ore., and has walked 20 miles a day, talking to people about Shriners Hospitals on the way. On Friday evening, Roger Farthing and other members of Topeka’s Arab Shrine Temple picked Harrington up on US-24 highway just west of Topeka and drove her to the Ramada in a limo.

Farthing, spokesman for the chapter, said the assistance from Shriners shows what they are willing to do to help Harrington since she is doing something for the Shriners Hospitals.

From the beginning of Harrington’s journey, the Shriners “have been so awesome,” she said. She had planned to camp out next to the road every night — she has a tent, sleeping bag and other camping gear — but has had to do so only four times. The Shriners, she said, heard what she was doing.

“It started with a deputy pulling up next to me on the highway and saying, ‘I’m not here to harass you, I’m here to help,’ ” she said.

For a 75-mile stretch, the man would pick Harrington up at the end of her day’s walk, take her to his home for a meal, and drive her back to the road where she had left off the next morning.

“He contacted someone in the next town, and it just kept going and going,” Harrington said.

During her journey, she has encountered everything from tornado warnings to snow, but she also has seen some interesting things along the road, off the beaten path. And crossing the Rockies, she said, was one of the highlights of her trip so far.

“What an accomplishment, to say I made it up to 11,000 feet,” she said.

The halfway mark of her journey, Harrington said, was another accomplishment. She reached it near Oakley, in northwest Kansas. When she sees it on a map, she said, she realizes how her 20 miles a day adds up.

“It’s not until I look at a map that I really realize the magnitude of what I’m doing,” she said.

The next Shriners Hospital that Harrington will stop at is in St. Louis, where she said they are building a new hospital. She plans to stay there for a couple of days before continuing north to Chicago.

Harrington projects she will reach Boston, the end of her cross-country walk, in mid-October.